Tag Archives: heart of darkness

Pozible Campaign for The Long Weekend

19 Oct

So ladies and gentlemen – for those of you who haven’t heard about this yet – the time has come for me to ask you all for a helping hand. Together we might just be able to pull off a GREAT ENDEAVOUR!!

This project isn’t really going to make any cash for me, I’ll be lucky if it covers the costs – I’m just grateful to you all for helping it see the light of day!!
This is a quick reminder that people can still preorder the comic for the next two or so months, those who haven’t gotten around to it can still do so. Every book that’s PRE-ordered means I can print a couple more as well which will give the project some longevity !!

Media – for those interested
* Here’s an article about the project from Alice Online by Dave Richards.
* On Monday the 22nd October Josh will be on Alice Springs ABC radio at (local time) 10:25 to talk with Nadine Maloney about the graphic novel – tune in!

We can … get this comic … PUBLISHED!!
YAY for Australian literary comics with Aussie content!!

“HOW can this be DONE???”
I hear you ask

This can be done with the help of our wonderful TEAM!
*Craig San Roque – will be writing a brand new piece for the book – entitled Milonga!!
*Nadine Kessler – will be making this into a beautiful book by weaving her book design magic on it!
*Me – Josh ! will be frantically drawing the cover and the final pages of artworks
*You and all your friends – will be checking out the POZIBLE site and choosing some great rewards which will go on to support the printing costs!
*Printing people – will be happily printing the comic and sending them to the comic dispensing centre (my house)
*Me – Josh! Will then be frantically sending them onto all of you who supported the printing of it!

If you’d like to support the project – please go HERE and sign up, we need your postal address to send you your rewards for supporting the project (no junk mail I promise).

We need to raise $$$$+ for the costs printing. The more preorders – the more books I can print!!

If you don’t have a credit card or don’t want to put your details into the web then just contact me at disco_jeans@yahoo.com.au and we can work something out.
If you haven’t got any money you can still help out by posting the Long Weekend Pozible page up on your facebook or Twitter accounts – that would be really great.

Updates about the campaign regularly at the facebook page and at Tweetrrr

IN OTHER NEWS – All of November 2012 I have an exhibition of comics in experimental layouts at the wonderful Artist Run Initiative in Hobart – INFLIGHT!! 100 Goulburn St, Wed-Sat 1-5pm. You can read all about it here.

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Pages 99-101

26 Jul

Previous pages – go to this link
You can preorder a copy of the book (to be printed early 2013) in September! For more details – go to this facebook site or check back here form September to December.

On these pages here I broke from the panels completely – It was an exceptionally wordy part … but I kind of liked the conversation in the essay and didn’t want to scrap that chatting aspect to the writing.  In fact – in my mind I had a second name for the third chapter – The Conversation. Most of what’s written here is probably known in Australia and isn’t really ground-breaking stuff – the bit that quite dig is the last bit on the last page which implies that what is happening to Indigenous people is a process that is affecting us all … which is something I feel keenly in this country – the trauma of colonisation is something felt by everyone, whether they are aware of it or not.

Next month I will commence a massive funding campaign to see if we can together organise enough pledges to get a good print-run off the ground!!

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Pages 89-91 – Sunday, the 3rd Chapter

13 May

So this is chapter 3 of The Long Weekend in Alice Springs. It was initially written in 2003 by Craig San Roque for a book published in the US by Routledge … and, although the themes are universal, I thought it a great shame that it wasn’t more read in Australia where the story was owned. Craig is a beautiful writer, very visual, and it struck a chord that rings in my thoughts continually, even after working on this rendition of his work four the last four years or so. I believe that this is a good beginning for the psychological meditation that we must do together in this country.

I suggest that you go back to the beginning if you’re interested in the comic … and have a damn good read (hopefully).

Incidentally – here is the link to the facebook group for the comic. Since I am nearing the completion of the artwork for this book – I have started to think about printing it physically and making a (*shudder*) ebook version out of it … I never envisaged that when I started making it … but e-books were still in their infancy when I started this project. Share the link with anyone who might be interested in such topics.

Next pages 92-95.
Just as an aside, I aim to finish all the inking of these pages in a the next couple of months (maybe by July 2012) and then in the second half of the year look at ways to turn this into a book with my lovely and talented graphic designer wife Nadine Kessler who’s done some top work in print over the years.

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Pages 84-88

1 May

SO – again for those of you coming in late – this is my graphic novel, the pages are being posted up here slowly, as I complete the inking of each page. In good news – I have only about 20 or so pages until its completed … YAY!! Lately I’ve been a little distracted from this project due to another comics-related project Sleuth … but I’m still hopeful that I can do them both at the same time and have this done by about July of this year (2012)

If you want to read from the beginning of the Long Weekend then go here – First chapter – FRIDAY
Previous pages in this chapter (Saturday) – 73-75, 76-83 … then these are the last pages in chapter two – SATURDAY

And that’s the end of Saturday, the second chapter … next up is Chapter three … which is a much different setting … it’s the third day. Next pages go here.

When Craig first sent me a copy of this piece he didn’t realise that he’d sent me a draft copy from his computer … I started drawing it a year or two later just for fun and when I started trying to work out how to end Saturday … I just kept getting frustrated at how it didn’t work. I don’t remember why but I decided to buy the book that the essay was part of and I flicked through it one day only to discover bits taken out and this bit put in … and all of a sudden I was gripped … what a chilling way to end Saturday … it felt like the darkest moment of the story and a fitting point to launch into the lighter and more easy going Sunday. It also featured darkness again … which went well with my decision to put in the Inanna story at the end of Friday … the comic would therefore be punctuated by daylight and night throughout the three parts … which echoed the circular nature of time which I wanted.

It’s funny how when you’re adapting a piece the source material seems to provide everything you need … at least when you have as good a writer as Craig doing it you can say things like that.

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Pages 76-83

18 Apr

SO – for those of you coming in late – this is my graphic novel, the pages are being posted up here slowly, as I complete the inking of each page. In good news – I have only about 20 or so pages until its completed … YAY!! Lately I’ve been a little distracted from this project due to another comics-related project Sleuth … but I’m still hopeful that I can do them both at the same time and have this done by about July of this year (2012)

If you want to read from the beginning of the Long Weekend then go here – First chapter – FRIDAY
Previous pages in this chapter (Saturday) – 73-75

Next pages 84-88.

The first page here was inspired in part by my beautiful partner Nadine Kessler and her explorations into type and old signage. It occurs to me that the personality of a town is expressed through the many layers of signage that it has gathered. You can get a wonderful snap-shot of a place through its signs. People from the place don’t even notice them after a while, but would know exactly (intuitively?) what the sign relates to.

The rest of the pages here are extremely abstracted versions of the idea that tools slowly form our world-view and our understanding, an interesting thought (says he as he types away on the computer … a machine that is slowly typing away at him).

Adapting this section was difficult to say the least, it was a far wordier part of the essay than I felt would work in comic-form … so I completely edited it, and left it in almost silence … which I felt would work much better after the noise and bluster at the end of the previous section where Craig is in the hospital with the young psychotic Aboriginal girl. The large part of Saturday is very conceptual and I also enjoyed the silent sections so much that I thought I’d put more of them in, to build up the contemplative tone that I had hoped to have throughout the entire piece. Actually … having placed these pages up here and read it again in this different context … I can see that its quite flawed still … I’ll have to think about this section a little more … hmmm works in progress are interesting.

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Pages 73-75

5 Apr

First chapter – FRIDAY
Previous pages in Saturday – 69-72

Next pages

I showed these pages to Craig once a while back and he paused and muttered “hmm, the poor thing”. I thought that I needed a page where his face said those words, so I chucked the third page in here to finish it up nicely. Aaah, mental health wards … what happy places.
I have nothing more to say about them.

I’m glad that I have a new concurrent project that involves me drawing the Carlton Blues players, every week that they play this season I shall stick up a new illustration on this site … it’ll be a relief to do something more light whilst I toil away at The Long Weekend and Sleuth.

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Pages 58-60

21 Feb

Synopsis and overview
First chapter – Friday
Previous pages in Saturday

Pages 58-60 (note page 59 is incomplete at this stage)


Next pages – 61-64
This last page is one of my favourites … the fun part about adapting something is that you can pretty much do anything you want with the words because they have no images associated with them. The image of the old man in the backyard singing the Tingari images with Craig’s words about imagination I thought was a great idea … it took me a little by surprise when I’d finished it and stood back to look at the image … as with all things comic based – it’s hard to imagine what it really will look like until you have finished the damn thing. Perhaps the more experienced people have a better sense of whether something won’t work at all … but I still suspect that even experienced people are taken by surprise when their ideas REALLY work.

As I mentioned in the last blog about the long weekend, the image of the map of Iraq is left unfinished at this point until I can get a copy of Craig’s actual map – even though it was only 100 years ago, it’s amazing how many place names look totally different on the modern map versus the old one. I liked the old map sooo much that I wanted to use it in the comic … so I’m waiting on Craig to take a photo and send a copy to me.

The first page here owes a lot to some of the notes in Bardon & Bardon’s amazing Papunya Tula book. It’s a truly monumental book which details so much about the PT movement in the Western Desert that it’s beyond belief – it’s a little like trying to read Strehlow’s works … it sort of saturates the mind and you kind of … implode a little trying to comprehend what it all bloody means … until you put it down to tend the veggie patch.

In other news – Craig San Roque himself is off to America, the land of the free where you shouldn’t forget to tip. He’s going to visit the CG Jung Institute of San Francisco  and he’s going to present some of this comic in a presentation that he’s doing over there … how terribly exciting. I did attempt to send him a booklet of the first 60 or so pages of this comic by Express Post … but apparently Hobart to Alice Springs would still take 5 working days to arrive at Craig’s doorstep (this is EXPRESS post we’re talking about people) and he leaves for the states on Sunday … so no dice! So – digital it is!!

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Pages 47-50

8 Jan

Here is the beginning of the second chapter of The Long Weekend – It’s called Saturday.
If you’d like to read the first chapter it’s here – Friday

It has been written and designed to be read as a book rather than online so if you’re the patient sort then you can wait for another year or two whilst I finish off the pages and sort out options for publishing … or alternatively, if you’re the impatient kind of person and you have good connections in the publishing world – you could save me a whole heap of time and send me tips about who to approach.

Next pages – 51-57.

Incidentally, I suggest that some of you who might be interested should check out Palestine by Joe Sacco. It’s from the 90’s, but it suffers from chronic awesomeness. It’s quite related to the LW as Sacco studies the nature of colonisation referencing both Edward Said and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; the latter being directly related to the second chapter of this comic right on this page. I haven’t gotten my dirty hands on Sacco’s new book – Footnotes in Gaza but here’s a good link with an interview with him about it.

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